Sunday 29th August 2010

So the government has announced that it’s going to axe NHS Direct and implement a new “non-emergency” helpline. The chief executive of NHS Direct says that the new service will be “better and more cost effective”. Which is nice; we want good healthcare, and we’re also a bit short of money at the moment. So an idea that could be better and cheaper is good.

If it isn’t a good idea, if it doesn’t really work, then ok. But it seems that the intention is to do what I just mentioned, better and cheaper.

“It is yet more evidence that Andrew Lansley is on a vindictive mission to break up the NHS, ruthlessly dismantling services before alternatives are in place.”

It’s something that you see time and time again in political discussions and I find it bloody annoying. Not that he disagrees with the idea, but that he’s assigning some sort of malicious motive to it. It seems common; the whole “Tories are Evil” thing, for instance. And, well, really? I get that you might disagree with the idea, but do you honestly think that (with one or two honourable exceptions!) someone goes to the effort of getting elected into office, purely for the reason of making things worse for people?

It’s ridiculous and stupid. Even if you disagree with an idea, you can’t just decide that the person who came up with that idea deliberately wants to make things worse for people. I mean, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Gordon Brown, and I think that he made certain things worse throughout his political career. But it would be foolish of me to assert that he did things maliciously (except – allegedly – certain things to destabilise Blair), just because I disagreed with his policies.

The same sort of thing gets thrown at Lib Dems now that they’re in the coalition, talk about selling out for power, or other such nonsense. Is it really that controversial to assume that, actually, they’re doing what they think is best for the country, rather than they’re nasty people who just want their own ministerial Jag?

2 Comments:

Sunday 29th August 2010, 3:41 am

I think that there are a lot of people who are still pretty scarred by their experiences of past Tory governments, and their perceptions of today’s Tories are coloured by that. That said, some of today’s Labour politicians really need to tone it down…

And yeh, you get the same kind of ridiculous stereotyping on both sides of the aisle. I’ve seen it on right-wing blogs where people accuse the left of being in favour of benefit scroungers and things like that. Gets on my nerves.

Anyways, the scariest thing aren’t people who think they’re doing evil, but people who, because they are adherents to a monstrous idea, think they’re doing the right thing.

So I suppose you could contend, if you feel like it, that Tories are alright, but Toryism is evil. I’m not saying that. But you could.

Sunday 29th August 2010, 4:47 pm

That Labour needs to “tone it down” is putting it rather mildly IMO! They’re behaving disgracefully at the moment, just mindlessly opposing everything the government does whilst spinning the “Tories want to screw the poor” and “Lib Dems sold out for power/have no principles” lines.

You’re right that there are people on all sides who do it, and it really winds me up because it doesn’t lead to any form of constructive debate whatsoever. I can understand why people may be scarred by previous Tory administrations, but it seems a little unfair to judge any party on how they were 20-odd years ago, when really they change quite considerably during that time. In another 20 years, I wouldn’t imagine that people will judge the Labour party on Gordon Brown’s policies…

I think it’s odd to state that any of the main parties are evil, because the majority of the time it’s simply a different approach to doing things. You have to go to people like the BNP to approach evilness, and in that case I don’t say that just because of their stated policies – awful as they obviously are – but also because of the connections they have to some pretty vile things, and what I suppose are their unstated policies.